Alien Isolation

You had to know this was coming…. This is the video game I’ve been waiting for, for a long, long time. I pre-ordered Alien: Isolation sometime over the summer–months ago. I’ve never pre-ordered a game. The only thing I wish I had now was a bigger flat screen TV!

And yes, I recorded this opening of the game myself! I was grinning like a 10 year old at Christmas.

If you don’t already know, I am obsessed with H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph. I’ve been enamored with the monster ever since I saw Alien on TV when I was around 11 years old. The film terrified me but the creature was such an amazing work of art I found even at that age I couldn’t look away. By the time I was 13, I was also reading the comics and drawing Xenomorphs straight from the pages. There are many things I’ve drawn and thrown away as a young artist, but these were not one.

So yeah. I’ve been waiting for this game. I’ve been waiting for video game graphics to reach the level needed for a quality game, made by people who know what an Alien game should be. And let’s face it, you could almost say this game was made for me. The main character, Ellen Ripley’s daughter, is named Amanda.

Because of some turmoil going on his my house at the moment, I didn’t pick up the game the day it released in stores. I picked it up over the weekend but still didn’t have a chance to play till yesterday. I didn’t mind waiting. My family comes first and the game wasn’t going anywhere, though I should have at least installed it over the weekend!

Alien Isolation is two discs and took longer to install than I imagined it would. If you own an Xbox 360 you can probably guess what happened next… There was an update to install too.

Ugh…

Once that finished I had to download my add-on content. One, Crew Expendable, comes with the game. The second, Last Survivor, was a bonus I received from GameStop for pre-ordering the game.

The game was worth the wait. It doesn’t take long to live up to its name. You begin the game as part of a team to investigate the discovery of the Nostromo’s flight recorder. Before Amanda and the others even board the trading station Sevastopol, she is separated from them. Alone. Isolated.

I haven’t even seen an alien yet and it’s had my heart pumping.

That’s all I’ll say for now. I don’t want to ruin the game for anyone who plans to buy/play. But if you’re interested in reading a more detailed review, that includes insane GIFs of the various ways the alien will kill you, take a look at this Alien Isolation review from Kotaku.